Panama stuff

First I just want to piggy back on clays comments about corrupt police in Costa Rica. It is a major problem getting pulled over 3 times in 2 days and having the cops to shake you down each time is a serious pain in the ass. On day three in Costa Rica the day we got pulled over twice within 30 minutes, we had just about had it with these jokers. We just smiled and nodded at everything the cop said. He threated to "take away our passports and licenses", we said "ok fine". then he was going to "impound the motorcycles", we said "ok if thats what you need to do", then he said "you will not be allowed to leave the country until you go to the bank which is already closed today (Monday at 2pm um hm ok...) and pay the fine" we smiled and agreed to wait until the bank opened to pay the fine so we were permitted to leave the country. This poor cop got so tired with us agreeing to his ridiculous demands that he just let us go, well more like "get the eff outta here" so that was Costa Rica. But aside from all the corrupt pig activity, Costa Rica is my favorite country so far. It is just absolutely beautiful the beaches and the dirt roads that connect the secret surf spots are out of a fairytale. I guess thats the reason Costa Rica has probably seen more tourism and related development than some other countries in Central America, even so its still a pretty sweet country.

Panama is pretty sweet too, but it feels completely different. As soon as you cross the boarder into Panama you are greeted by the sight of a beautiful straight and wide concrete freeway that could have only been conceived by American engineers. 6 weeks ago back home in the Bay Area seeing a road like this is no big deal, but after 6000 miles of mostly piss poor pavement, decreasing radius turns and potholes the size of storm drains the real Panamerican HWY looks impressive. For the most part the so called Panamerican HWY outside of Panama is really not that great, many sections remain under construction and are largely unpaved, other parts run through towns and villages and require you to slow down to ridiculously slow speeds of 25kph (= 10 mph), this is not longer the case once you enter Panama, although the condition and size of the freeway does vary slightly as you move through the country it is a vast improvement over much of the freeways that we have ridden so far and is on par with roads in the US. Now thinking back to Mexico the roads there, especially the Mex200 were very good, but Central America for the most part has been a different story.
Last night and tonight we are in Panama City. It is pretty chill here. There are approximately 500,000 people who live in the city and about 3.2 mil people who live in all of Panama. Panama City aside Panama feels the most under developed, most of the country just feels like a tropical wilderness and when you look at a map its not much of a surprise the only thing you really see on the map is the Panamerican HWY and Panama City which is situated right next to the Panama Canal.
so we went to check out the canal today, 8 bucks (yes all USD in Panama, feels kinda cool to be using real money again but to still be paying dirt cheap prices for everything) got us into the observation deck to check out the big boats moving through the lock systems, a short informational film on the history of the canal and cool museum that kept going on forever. It was a fun filled day at the canal. Lots of boats and water moving around.
Tomorrow we are waking up early to continue south for another 80km or so where we will take a louie (left hand turn) in the town of Llano, at which point we hit the dirt road to get to the dock on the Caribbean side were we are meeting up with Fritz The CAT! I cant wait for somebody else to do all the navigating. Im going to sit on the deck and sip on rum and cokes for the next 4 days. total sweetness... Peace OUT!
oh Post Script we found out yesterday that a total of 14 people will be on Fritz The Cat, so it might be kind of a party scene. We will post pics of the madness once we arrive in Columbia.